


in the dark hours

by stellarel



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:02:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28532595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarel/pseuds/stellarel
Summary: The Doctor is in space jail. And she is alone, and tired, and miserable, and there's an annoying flashing light at her window.And then one night she sees something else there, too. Someone.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	in the dark hours

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about how the Doctor was in space jail for Literal Decades and, well, i have some thoughts about that. about how she might be coping with that. or not coping. depends.
> 
> enjoy. and i'm sorry.

"Hello, Sweetie."

The Doctor's eyes shoot open. It takes her a moment to adjust in the dark room, and her head is spinning from surprise and confusion and hope and adrenaline and -

and she falls to the floor. In her rush to get out of bed, she had forgotten to take into consideration the gravity in there - modified to each prisoner's home planet, she wasn't exactly that used to it. Not anymore. 

" _River?_ " She whispers, willing her eyes to adjust, looking around the room without seeing much of anything. The constant pulsing light in one of the windows - a pulsar, or a lighthouse planet, or maybe just there to confuse her, she wasn't sure - was throwing her off tremendously. It worked as a form of torture, she supposed; never full darkness and never full light. Only the pulsing light, ticking away the time even as the days started to bleed into each other.

She can sense a presence in the far corner of the room, and she stands up on weak legs and turns to it, the hope burning both of her hearts. They were nearly bursting from it, beating twice as fast as they were supposed to.

"Oh, Dear. You're tiny this time around, aren't you? Even the overalls are far too big. They should have put you in baby jail."

In a flash of light, the Doctor can just about make out the outline of one blurry, but unmistakable, River Song. Her hair like a halo of spun sunlight, and with a smile on her lips.

The Doctor smiles back, instinctively, and her face feels weird doing it. Unfamiliar. Like it wasn't even her face doing it, like someone else was controlling her muscles. 

She takes a step towards River.

And then she hesitates.

"Are you real?" She asks, careful, and so quiet it barely counts as speaking. Her voice is starting to feel like a water balloon in the back of her throat, about to burst. 

She can't quite see it, but she can sense River rolling her eyes.

"Oh, you've been in here for _far_ too long, love. Of course I'm real. Well, as much as any of us, I suppose. But that's getting a philosophical. Always hated philosophy. Too many questions that you're not supposed to answer."

River looks remarkably calm for someone breaking into a top security prison. 

But then again, she has experience.

"How did you get in here undetected?" The Doctor asks, furrowing her brows, suddenly worried. She knew the security in this place was...ruthless, and very, very detailed. She should know - she had experimented with pretty much every option there was for getting out.

"Oh, you know. I have my ways." River smiles, in a way that suggested the Doctor probably didn't even want to know, even though she really kind of wanted, a bit. "Breaking out of prison is hard, breaking _in_ is remarkably more easy."

The Doctor just stares at her, for a moment. She's finally starting to see more clearly, and she is determined to commit every detail of this to memory. She hadn't seen a friendly face in a long, long time. So she would make this count.

She takes an unsure step towards River again. Unsteady, and with her legs a little weak, the Doctor has to lean to a wall to not fall over again.

"Weak at the knees for me, are you?" River teases, and the Doctor merely groans as a response. 

"So how are we getting out of here?" The Doctor asks, changing the topic quickly, before she gets distracted, before her mind derails. If they manage to break out, there will be time for _all_ the distraction in the world, later, but first, they have to break out.

River is silent.

And the Doctor doesn't like the way it sounds.

Her face probably goes through 10 different emotions all at once, next. She isn't sure. Not being around humans, around other people, the Doctor's abilities to focus on what her face was doing had slowly decayed. She no longer paid much attention to her expressions, because there wasn't anyone to see them, most of the time. And surely not anyone who cared about them. 

"River, why are you here?" She eventually asks, after a silence that is a little too long and far too heavy.

"Well. I heard they put you in jail and it stuck. Had to come see for myself." 

It sounds hollow somehow, like she doesn't really mean it. 

River's smile softens a little, and she tilts her head. "I did my fair share of jail time, you know. Thought I could drop by and give you a few tips."

The Doctor takes a deep breath, and the conversation feels like it's starting to float away from real and into the realm of surface-level chitchat.

She doesn't know how to stop it from doing that, so she goes along. "Anything useful?"

"Oh, absolutely not. I'm not _boring_."

"Thought not. Any good connections in here?"

"Just one." River smiles at her, one of those smiles that doesn't look like much but hides a lot of warmth behind it. 

She looks at the Doctor long enough for her to get the point. 

"Oh."

River looks around the cell, next, derailing the conversation once more. "Quite a place you got here. How are you coping without any of your toys?"

The Doctor, involuntarily, scrunches up her face, and then quickly shifts her eyes to the floor. She's quiet for a beat. "Been talking to myself a lot. Not many of the other prisoners _talk_ , you know. Gets very boring in here very quickly."

River laughs. And it's the most wonderful sound the Doctor has heard in a long time. "Like I said. Should have put you in baby jail."

The Doctor huffs out an annoyed puff of air, and oh, she has _missed_ this. 

Then the light in the window flashes again, and it sparks another thought in her head. 

"River." The Doctor says, her voice now more serious, more heavy, than before.

"Yes, my love?"

"You said breaking out of a prison is hard."

"Yes, I did." River answers, in a tone that made it sound like she was talking about the weather. Not like she was talking about breaking out of the most secure prison on this side of reality.

"How will _you_ get out?"

"Like I said, I have my ways." River shrugs with one shoulder, and something about the gesture reminds the Doctor of Amy. 

She makes the very conscious decision to push that feeling somewhere very, very deep into the back of her hearts to deal with it later. 

"Why can't I come with you?" She asks after a few seconds of silence. Quiet, and genuine. The Doctor has been there for a very long time and she has tried very hard to escape and she is finally tired enough to beg. 

"Spoilers."

The Doctor takes a shaky breath, and a shaky step towards her wife. Her hearts feel shaky, too. "No, River! No! I _have_ to get out of here, I have people who need me -"

The Doctor almost says _people who think I'm dead_ , but something that sits heavy on top of her hearts stops her.

"Please, River." She whispers, " _Please_. Just this once, please."

River smiles at her. It's a sad, apologetic smile. The Doctor knows what it means even before she answers.

"I'm sorry my love, but I can't."

The Doctor wants to argue. She really, really does. But somehow every argument falls flat before it even gets out of her mouth - she knows. Of course she knows. She knows how this works. River knows what's supposed to happen, and the Doctor doesn't. River knows. River always knows, and she's just trying to keep the timeline intact. She _has_ to leave the Doctor here, if that's how it's supposed to be.

The Doctor lets out a breath, and it feels like her hearts are deflating with it, and settling back to their previous, stony state. Tired, and heavy, and cold. 

"How long do you have?" The Doctor asks, her voice feeling like it belongs to someone else. 

River glances at the vortex manipulator on her wrist. She takes a moment too long to answer. 

"I wish I could stay."

"Yeah." The Doctor breathes out, and it feels more like an admittance of defeat than an answer. 

River gives her another apologetic smile, and opens the case of the vortex manipulator.

"River?" The Doctor asks, hurriedly, and River meets her eyes again.

"Yes, dear?"

"There isn't really a baby jail, is there? Because that would be cruel and -"

River chuckles, throwing her head back a little. Her hair catches the light again, and some old mythological story about a goblin falling in love with a ray of light tickles the back of the Doctor's head.

"No, darling, it's just an expression. Don't worry." 

The Doctor lets her shoulders relax, a bit. "Oh. Good."

They share another smile - tired on the Doctor's end, but still grasping at the hope of it desperately with both hands, trying to relish every second of this - and sad but sweet on River's end. 

In a flash of light, she's gone again. 

And the Doctor is alone again, back on the hard bed again, surrounded by the wrong type of gravity and the endless flashing light blinking on and off in the backs of her eyelids. 


End file.
